


darling one, just live

by TheDragonofHouseMormont



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Multiple Lives, Reincarnation, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-15 05:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8044432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragonofHouseMormont/pseuds/TheDragonofHouseMormont
Summary: He’s afraid of what he might do if he were to find out they are soulmates.  He’s afraid of what he might do if he were to find out they are not.  He doesn’t know which outcome frightens him more.
time isn't always enough, but maybe time is the only thing they need | a soulmate au





	darling one, just live

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from You by Keaton Henson.

1839

“You were happy too?”  It is both a question and a statement, a truth that belongs only to them.

So he answers.  “You know I was,” and he hates the way past tense tastes in his mouth, the loss of possibility as it passes through his lips.  He is sitting so close to her, but the distance he has put between them stretches, expands.  He could close it with a word, he knows, but it isn’t the right choice to make, so he doesn’t.  And every second that passes where he doesn’t is another inch, another piece of the path between them torn away, and soon he will be an island.

“I don’t want to marry someone who isn’t my soulmate,” she says in that simple way she always does that makes a topic seem casual, like something one might bring up without hesitation, rather than a thing that is never mentioned in polite society.  She doesn’t stop there, she wouldn’t be his queen if she did.  “You and your lady wife did not share a soulmark?”

“No, we did not, but we tried our best to make it work.”  If he wants to convince her of his attachment to his late wife, he is failing, but he knows the point is a dead one.

“What is your soulmark?”

It’s a personal question, but they don’t know how to be anything but close – something they’ll have to unlearn.  “It is a flower.”  _Liar,_ he scolds himself.  That was Caroline’s, a daisy.  He watches as Victoria’s face manages to fall even further, but he still won’t tell her the truth.  He’s not entirely sure why he lied to her about his mark.  He’s afraid of what he might do if he were to find out they are soulmates.  He’s afraid of what he might do if he were to find out they are _not._ He doesn’t know which outcome frightens him more.

She keeps her eyes trained on the floor, but he can see the myriad expressions that flick across it as she tries to school her features.  She has never been good at hiding her emotions from him, doesn’t have his experience in society.  Then again, his experience rarely does him any good with her; whenever he is with her there is nowhere he can hide.  They always know each other like—

_No,_ he chases the thought away.  They are not – cannot be – soulmates.

-

1840

_Ignore it, Drina,_ her mother would always tell her whenever she was caught trying to catch a glimpse of her mark in the mirror.  _Soulmarks are primitive, unanständig things.  We are civilized._ And she said that last word, _civilized,_ with such an air of finality that Victoria never found it in herself to argue back.

The words drift around her now as she stands alone in her room, her back to the mirror as she looks over her shoulder, trying to see the small, black marking that she’s rarely given time to dwell on these days.  There is no one here to stop her now, no one to scold her for thinking of improper things.

‘Marry _him_ ,” Albert had spat at her.  He couldn’t know that she would without hesitation, given the chance.  But she won’t get that chance, the world isn’t so forgiving.

Lord M’s soulmark is a flower, like all the flowers he sends.  It doesn’t match hers, but still she loves him.  Could Albert’s mark be the same as hers?  Doubtful, there is no ease of comfort between them, no natural understanding.  But she knows love is possible between those who don’t share a mark.  If she can fall in love with Lord Melbourne, then she can fall in love with Prince Albert.  She just has to try.

So she steps away from the mirror, turns away from the mark on the middle of her back, and pulls her shift back on to hide it.  Soulmarks are improper things anyway, and she has a whole country to worry about.

-

“Is something the matter, ma’am?”  She’s quiet this morning, cold almost, and he’s concerned for her well-being.

She pauses in her walking and so he stops to stand beside her.  “It’s just,” she says to her shoes before lifting her head to look him in the eye.  “I feel as if there are two versions of me.  There is the Victoria of before and the Victoria of the road ahead.”

“And you don’t know which one to choose?”

“No, that’s not it.”  Her brow furrows and he can see how much this perplexes her.  “I don’t like that I have to choose at all.  No, that’s not accurate either.  I don’t like that the choice isn’t one I get to make.”

He shakes his head slightly, confused.  “I’m not sure I understand.”

Her eyes meet his again.  “Yes, sorry.  I mean to say… I don’t get to choose, I don’t get to be the Victoria of before.  I only get to be the Victoria of tomorrow, whether I want to or not.  The choices that I’m making, that I _have_ to make, are separating me somehow.  Like I’ve made a decision, but I’m watching another woman live out the consequences.”

His hand twitches as he fights to keep from reaching for her.  “If you are unhappy,” he stops, knowing that he must be careful with his words.  “The decisions going forward are yours to make, and I will support you, however you choose.”

Her mouth flickers, but he can’t tell if she meant to smile or frown.  “It’s alright.  But Albert thinks I’m too friendly with you.”

“I see.”  He looks away from her.  He wishes they were walking again.  The stillness is suffocating and he wonders now if the cold he felt earlier had nothing to do with her mood but everything to do with the distance he created between them.  “Is that how you feel?”

“I don’t know.  I know he is not my soulmate, but he is not a bad sort.  I would like for him to not always look as if I have done something wrong.”

And when she walks away, Melbourne knows what he must do for her happiness.  He doubts he will be able to let go of her entirely, but he cannot remain by her side.  And not for the first time he thinks he may have made a mistake.

-

1848

They are here to give her the news.

She already knows.

-

1922

The wind whips at her face and she tries to pull her coat tighter about her with one hand, her other hand clutching the handle of her suitcase like she’s forcing it to fuse with her limb.  The sun has already gone down and she doesn’t like to be out after dark, alone in this city, but she doesn’t have a choice.  She either makes the leap tonight or she stays here forever, and she can’t accept that second option.

Her ankle tries to bend under her foot and she feels the pain before she knows what’s happening, tripping in the process and almost falling down.  She regains her balance, staring down at the road beneath her feet, knowing that there was absolutely no reason for her near-fall.  “Useless ankles,” she mutters to herself, as she continues, now with a slight limp.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” a voice asks her.

She looks up at the man approaching her.  Just what she needed, a hurting ankle and a stranger while she walks alone at night.  “I’m fine,” she rushes to assure him.  “Or I will be in a minute.  This is a rather frequent occurrence.  I don’t know what’s wrong with them,” she says, glancing down at her feet.  “I think it’s because they’re too small.”

He’s close enough that she can see his face now, but he makes no move to get any closer.  A small smile curls on the edges of his lips, laughter in his eyes.  “I assume you’re on your way to the docks?”  He gestures at the luggage in her hand.

“You assume correctly.”

“It’s a bit late to be walking alone.”  He falls in to step beside her.  “All manner of people tend to walk these streets at this time.”

“Like you?” she asks, but she can’t help the playful smile as she looks up at him.

He laughs quietly, briefly, like he meant to contain it but couldn’t.  “I can’t imagine – No, I am on my way home from the office.  The day carried on longer than I had expected.  I guess it’s safe to say that you are not.”

“Not what?”

“Headed home.”

She looks down at her suitcase without meaning to.  “No, I’m going to New York City.”

“Ah,” he says.  She studies his face, looking for signs of disapproval, but finds none.

“I hear it’s the place to be,” she says by way of explanation.  “Or, at least I hope it’s the place to be.  I can’t stay here any longer.  Everyone expects me to marry.  To have children and be a wife.  I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want to _be_ that.”

“You wish to be independent,” he says with an air of understanding.

“Yes.”  Something twists inside her stomach, like she’s worried he doesn’t quite get her meaning, but they’ve reached the ticket office and he stands back as she steps up to the desk.

When she returns, ticket in hand, he walks alongside her and they sit down on a bench, waiting for the passengers to be called to board.  For the first time she realizes this whole situation might be unusual, but it doesn’t feel unusual so she ignores the thought.

She wants to correct the misunderstanding she has built in her mind.  “I’m not _against_ marriage, I just don’t want to be forced into it.  I want to marry for the right reasons.”

He looks her in the eye as he thinks on her words.  “You mean your soulmate.”

“Yes.  Maybe.  I don’t know if I’ll ever even meet them.”

“I haven’t,” he admits, and the movement of his hand catches in her periphery.  She watches as he grabs near his elbow, seemingly without knowing it, and wonders if that is where his soulmark is.  “It’s a long journey to America.”

The change of topic throws her for a moment.  “I suppose it is.”

“I hope you are not prone to motion sickness,” he teases her.

She smiles.  “Truthfully, I hadn’t thought of it.  But there’s more to fear out there than nausea.”  A pause, her next words are careful.  “Next month will make ten years since it happened.”

The silence between them becomes a solemn one.  “It must have been terrifying,” he finally says.  “To die like that.”

“Or to live through that,” she responds.  “I’ve heard it’s agony to lose your soulmate.”

“I’ve heard the same.  They’ve tried to study it, you know, but it’s a difficult field.  They say that even if you’ve never met your soulmate, you can still feel when they die.  But it’s apparently worse if you’ve met them.  They think there’s a correlation between the strength of the bond and the pain of severing it.”

“But if I were to die on this journey, hypothetically, my soulmate, whoever they may be, will know.”

“Yes.”  Another pause, he opens his mouth to say something but another voice yells over his, calling for the passengers to board.

She stands up, straightening her skirt and picking up her case.  She holds out her free hand and he shakes it.  “Thank you,” she says.  “For staying with me.”

“It was my pleasure,” he tells her, sincere.  “Good luck in New York.”

As she steps onto the ramp, she looks back and sees him watching her.  She tries to smile at him, but can’t manage it.  A few more steps and she is halfway there, she looks back again, catching his eye once more.

It’s not until she’s on deck, watching him shrink in the distance that she realizes she never even asked his name.

-

2016

It isn’t raining yet, but as she glances out the café window and up at the sky, she thinks it will soon.  She likes sitting here, at this particular table with its view of the ocean right across the street.  It’s peaceful, and while she’s always felt like something is missing in her life, these quiet moments before work spent drinking tea and sketching with the ocean in sight almost seem to fill the hole.

She hears the bell on the door chime just as she turns her attention back to the page in front of her, drowns out all the other sounds and the way the cold morning air brushes along her neck.  Her pencil scratches along paper, graphite taking on a new shape, becoming something it never dreamed of transforming into.

“Is that Queen Victoria?” a man asks her, breaking her concentration.

“Yes.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

And there, against her will, at the sound of his apology, she looks up to see him turning away, catching sight of his light eyes and calming features.  She finds that she doesn’t feel bothered.  “Oh, no,” she says quickly, regaining his attention.  “It’s alright.”

He smiles and it’s warm, like a candle with a small flame, her hands hovering over.  She can’t help but smile back until she realizes he’s holding a cup that is dangerously full, so she gestures for him to take the seat in front of her.  He nods and sets the cup on the table, sliding the chair back with a quick scrape of wood on tile, before sitting down.

She notices the foam on top of his drink, the brown sprinkled across it.  “Is that cinnamon?”

“Uh, no, actually, it’s nutmeg.  It’s strangely why I’m here, actually.  A colleague knew I liked fresh nutmeg and recommended this place, since they actually have it available here.”

“You know, I come to this shop most days, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried it before.”  She tries not to reflect on the oddity of discussing a spice with a complete stranger.

“You should.”  He pauses, looks at her a moment, and then holds out his hand.  “I’m William, by the way.”

She shakes his hand.  “Victoria.”

His eyes light up in amusement.  “Ah, like the sketch you’re working on.”

“I’ll admit, that’s what drew me too her when I was little,” she laughs.  “But now I just find her fascinating.”

“How so?” he asks with genuine interest.

“Beyond the obvious?”  At his nod, she continues.  “Well, I guess, there’s this thing.  I mean, we live in a world where people can find their soulmates and live these lives full of grand love.  But Victoria managed to build this wonderful, happy marriage with a man who wasn’t her soulmate.  She actually wrote in her journals that his soulmark was a lion, while hers was not.”  She picks up her drink and finds its gone cold from how she’s neglected it all morning.

William looks out the window in thought.  “What was her soulmark? I can’t remember.”

“That’s because no one knows.  She never describes it in her journals.”

“Right.”  He looks back at her.  “And it was considered improper to talk about then, so—”

“—so no record of what it was exists, as far as anyone knows.”

“I wonder why she never wrote about it.”

Victoria shrugs her shoulders.  “I don’t know.”  She looks down at her watch.  “Oh, I uh, I have to walk to work.”

“Walk?”

“Yeah.”  She closes her sketchbook and quickly shoves it into her bag.  “I work at The Royal Pavilion, just up the road.”  Standing up, she grabs her coat from the back of the chair and slides it on.

He stands up from his chair.  “Do you mind if I walk with you?”

This is usually the moment where she says no and walks out as fast as possible, but there’s nothing threatening in the hopeful look on his face.  She feels at ease with him in a way she typically doesn’t with people, so she catches herself saying, “Yes.”

He smiles and finishes off the rest of his drink before following her out the door.  “The Royal Pavilion,” he says as they walk along the pavement.  “I’ve got this feeling you’re a fan of the 19th century.”

Victoria tries not to smile at the warmth and humour in his tone.  “It’s a job.  But I like being around all the art.”

“From what I could tell, you’re a good artist.”

“Thank you.”  A few more steps and the words just seem to pour out of her.  “I like to think of Queen Victoria as a sign of hope.  That there’s someone out there for you, even if they’re not your soulmate.”

He looks away from her, watching the path beneath them.  “I take you haven’t met yours then.”

“No.  Sometimes it worries me.”

“You’ll be fine,” he smiles at her.  “I haven’t met mine either, but I’ve survived this long.”

She laughs at his joke.  “You make it sound like you’re old, but you’re not.”

The corners of his mouth lift up in a smile that almost seems secret.  “If only that were true.”

“I wonder what it must have been like for the queen,” she says, thoughtful.  “To go her whole life and never know her soulmate.”

“Perhaps it’s for the best,” he responds in a tone that matches hers.  “They say you can feel when your soulmate dies, but that the pain is worse if you’ve met them.  At least, if she didn’t know who her soulmate was, she wouldn’t have suffered too much when they died.”

Victoria thinks about it for a minute.  “But what if she had met them, but didn’t know they were her soulmate, and found out they were because of the terrible pain she felt upon their death?”

“I’ll admit, I hadn’t considered that,” he says quietly as they come to a stop outside the entrance of The Royal Pavilion.

“That must have been horrible,” she mutters.  She looks up at him, fully realizing their height difference.  But there’s something about his appearance that makes having to look up worth it.  “I guess it’s time for me to go.”  She makes to turn around, but doesn’t quite bring herself to move.

“May I see you again?” he asks in a rush.

She breathes in relief.  “I would like that.”

“When are you available?”

“I have the day off tomorrow, would that work?

He smiles and nods.  “Meet at the café?”

-

Her breath drifts out as white smoke, dissipating in the air before her, but she doesn’t feel cold.  The sun is out, with the threat of clouds hanging in the distance, and she can hear the waves roll in as she waits.  And that’s the feeling sinking in her stomach, _waiting._ She agreed to spend her day off with a relative stranger.  Was it a date?  Maybe.  She certainly feels that unwanted anxiety that precedes a date, but at the same time, it isn’t one.  No one mentioned the word ‘date’, and for all she knows he isn’t even interested in her that way.  She resolves to not consider a date, just two people getting to know each other.  And she wants to know him, that much is certain to her.

A small car slows to a stop in front of her.  The door opens and William steps out.  “I thought we could go for a drive.”

She smiles, stepping forward with excitement.  “Where to?”

“It’s a surprise.  But it’s about 45 minutes away, so if you don’t think it’s a good idea—”

She answers his unasked question by opening the car door and claiming the passenger seat.  He joins her in a second.  “For all I know, you could be a serial murderer,” she jokes.

He doesn’t look at her as he pulls back onto the road, but still replies, “I don’t know if it will do any good, but I assure you I am not.”

Victoria watches the buildings and people, all the shopfronts and shoppers and those on their way to work speed past the window as they head out of town.   Soon the sights of the city are replaced with trees on either side of the motorway as they head east.

She turns from the window and to the man sitting in the seat next to her.  “If I can’t ask where we’re going, can I at least ask questions about it?”

He glances at her quickly before looking back at the road ahead.  “I guess, as long as I can choose not to answer.”

“Deal,” she says.  “First question—”

“First?  Exactly how many questions are there?” he teases her.

“Oh just,” she laughs.  “Just shut up and let me ask.”  Taking a moment to force her laughter to calm, she swallows and continues.  “First question, are we going to be inside or outdoors?”

“Um, both I suppose.  It’s up to you really.”

“Okay, cryptic.  How do you know this place?”

“I went there once, but it’s been years.”

“So why take me there?”

“I feel fairly confident you will like it.”

“But why take _me_ there,” she whispers like an afterthought, a phrase that slipped through when she wasn’t looking.  Her eyes grow wide as soon as she realizes what she has said out loud and she looks up to find his face full of uncertainty.  “I didn’t ask that, forget I asked that,” she frantically tries to recall the question.  “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”  She didn’t mean to call attention to the oddness of the situation.  He smiles, but it’s awkward, so she quickly moves on to her next question.  “Why do you think I’ll like it?”

“Ah, now that,” and his smile this time is much more full.  “Is one I choose not to answer.”

“Okay,” she accepts.  “Do you like to read?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with where we’re going.”

“It doesn’t.  It’s just a question.”

“In that case, yes, I love reading.”

“Good,” she says simply.

“Good?”  He looks at her again and finds her watching him with a smile.

“What do you like to read?”

“Um, novels.”

“There are worse answers.”

He can’t help the quick laugh that escapes as he finishes his answer.  “And I like to read about the natural world.  What about you?”

“Novels,” she replies, one corner of her mouth rising.  “As well as history and art history.”

“What’s your favourite book,” he asks.

Without hesitation, she says, “Jane Eyre.”

 

“Really?” his tone isn’t mocking, just curious.  “Why Jane Eyre?”

“It’s a secret,” she tells him, this time a little more hesitant.  “But there are a lot of things that make it great.  Jane is a pretty inspiring character.”

“And Rochester?”

She laughs quietly.  “Rochester is… interesting.  And I mean that with love.  I think there’s something to be admired, in the face of Jane’s practicality, to remain so emotionally vulnerable.  As much as I admire Jane, I’m probably a lot more like Rochester.”

“He was older than her, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” she wonders if he’s thinking about their own apparent age difference.  “He was older and married and had a rather scandalous past.”

“Quite the match then,” he jokes.

-

The car grows silent as they near the end of the 45 minutes and Victoria has her eyes back on the world around them, trying to work out where they are and where they’re going.  The sky is overcome with grey clouds as they begin to drive through a small town and she sees a sign that has ‘Arundel’ written on it.  “Are we going to the castle?”

He watches her as he asks, “Was it a good idea?”

“Definitely.”

-

“Do you know what made me think of this place?”  William asks as they wander through the castle garden.

Victoria kneels down to look closer at a bee that has landed on a flower near her leg.  “Because it’s beautiful here?”

“It is,” he agrees.  “But that’s not the reason.  It was our conversation yesterday.  Queen Victoria actually came here once in the 1840s, with Prince Albert.”

She stands back up.  “Really?  That’s awesome.  She stayed in the castle?”

“Yes.  It was newly remodeled at the time.”

“And she walked along this path?”

“I have no idea,” he laughs.  “But I assume so.”

“And she went into that glass house?” she asks, pointing to it just a little bit ahead of them.

“No, actually.  That was built a few years later.”

“We should go in,” she says, and starts walking toward it without waiting for his reply.  She can feel him following behind her all the same.

It’s much warmer inside the glass house and there’s a far larger variety of plants than outside.  She doesn’t slow down as her eyes roam over all the colour, everything there is to see.  Until the feeling of William’s nearness disappears and she breaks stride, turning around to look for him.

He’s a little ways back, standing still, his attention on the plant in front of him.  She walks to him, not bothering to see what has caught his gaze until she’s standing right next to him.  A white orchid.  “It’s beautiful.”

“They’re very difficult to grow,” he tells her.

She lets the silence wrap around them a moment before she confesses a thought that has plagued her since the previous day.  “I was thinking,” she begins.  “How possible it actually was that the queen did not know who her soulmate was.”

“Well, she was the queen.  It’s not like she had much choice in her suitors.”

“But she was also the _queen_.  She would have met so many people.  Any one of them could have shared her soulmark.”

“You know a lot about her, right?” he confirms.  She nods.  “Did she ever write about being unusually sad when someone died?”

Victoria looks up at the ceiling as she tries to remember.  “No, I don’t think so.  But she also never even described her own soulmark.  It’s like there are some secrets she kept even from her journals.”

“Hmm,” he starts walking again, slowly, this time in the direction of the exit.  “We know Albert wasn’t her soulmate.  Was there someone else she was close with?”

“Um, yeah actually.  There was Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister when she took the throne.  He was her mentor and her friend.”

“Wasn’t his name William, too?”

She bumps her shoulder into his arm.  “Quite a grand coincidence here.  But let’s say Lord Melbourne really was her soulmate.  They were friends, they were _close_ , so why would she marry someone else?”

“Even if she did know, which in such a repressed society would have been unlikely, I’m sure there were circumstances that would have gotten in the way.”

Victoria shakes her head, unwilling to accept that answer.  “What circumstances would have led to them losing their friendship and her marrying someone else?”

“Think about he was— well, he was older and a widower and had a scandalous past.  I don’t think anyone around her would have allowed for it.”

“She was the queen,” Victoria huffs.  “She had the right to ignore the people around her.”

“But he wouldn’t have had that right.  He would have done what he thought was best for her.  Even if that meant stepping aside.”  He exits the glass house and she follows, the chilly autumn air hitting them.

She can smell moisture, knows it will likely rain any moment.  But instead of pointing that out, the words that escape her are, “If you’re going to compare him with Rochester, I’d like to remind you that things actually worked out for him and Jane.”

“Yes,” he smiles at her, coming to a stop in the middle of the path.  “And I’d say Brontë went through quite a lot of trouble to make that happen in the story.”

“Ah, fiction,” she jokes, but the smile quickly drops from her face.  “Jane Eyre came out in 1847, a year before Lord Melbourne died.  Imagine reading that and knowing in some world things could have ended happier.  If they had tried.  If he really was her soulmate and she didn’t know until the pain she felt when he died, that would have been _infuriating._ ”  The last word comes out seething, like she feels the anger and pain from the late queen herself.  Maybe she can.

“She had Albert,” William tries to remind her, weakly.  “She was happy.”

“But to have had that one person who matched her, who understood her like no one else?  To have had everything?  Could she forgive him for denying her that?”

And the sky chooses that moment to open up and drown any possible answer.  He grabs her hand and she likes how it feels in his.  She pulls herself closer to him as he tries to get them both out of the rain as fast as possible and back to his car.

-

The rain pours heavier, pattering on glass as she watches it through the window of the tea shop they ended up taking shelter in town.  She sips her hot chocolate quietly while William sits across from her, and she knows she hasn’t really said anything since they sat down, soaked through from their run, but she feels trapped inside her own thoughts.

Yet he waits patiently and it isn’t until her drink is almost finished that he finally says something.  “Penny for your thoughts?”

She sets her drink down on the table in front of her with a soft thud.  “I was just, I guess I was thinking about Jane Eyre and… I wonder if the queen ever waited, you know, for him to return.  Because I think she would have forgiven him.  I think she _did_ forgive him.”

“Why?”

“Because of Jane Eyre, something she says.  ‘All my heart is yours.  It belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.’  If they were soulmates, her love would never have faded, no matter how much distance they put between them.”

He sits up straighter as her words settle around them.  “I like that idea.  It’s comforting.”

“Like I said,” her tone is playful.  “There are lots of reasons to love that book.  But my favourite thing about it is when she says ‘I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.’  When I was a teenager I always took it as a reminder that I am more than just my soulmark.”

“What?” he asks a little too loudly, his gaze piercing.

“My soulmark, it’s a bird.”  She shakes her head like the knowledge is useless.  “I’ve never had much of an interest in anyone so I liked the reminder that it didn’t matter.  That even if I never found my soulmate, I wasn’t my mark.”

He looks like he’s in shock, which worries her enough that she stops talking.  “What did you say?” he asks only a little quieter than his previous question.

“What my favorite line in Jane Eyre is?”

“No, after that.  Your mark.”

Her eyes widen as she realizes far too late what information she revealed.  “My mark is a bird.”

“Can I see it?”

“It’s on my back,” she tells him, uncertain as she stands up from her seat.  The rain is still pouring down outside.  She looks around at the other patrons, but no one seems to be paying any attention to them.  Slowly, she steps closer to him on the other side of their little table and, slowly, she turns around.  She lifts the back of her shirt up, trying not to appear strange, hoping no one looks their way.

She hears a shuffle of movement, a creaking of wood, that tells her he is standing up behind her.  When the bottom of her shirt has been pulled several inches above the band of her bra she stops, knowing exactly where on her back her mark is, nestled in the center between the bottoms of her shoulder blades.  She hears a sharp gasp from him and almost asks if something is wrong when she feels his warm hand on her mark.  It’s like a spark, a flame, something worth protecting from the flickering wind, and it spreads through her, rippling along her skin.

She drops her shirt back down and spins around to look at him.  He is still, his gaze unmoving like he is still staring at something which is no longer there.  She reaches out to touch him but doesn’t, yet the movement snaps him out of the thought which held so strongly.  His left hand reaches for the cuff of his sleeve on his right arm, and he begins rolling it up.  She doesn’t ask why, doesn’t need to, she just watches, waiting.  He rolls his sleeve up past his elbow and there it is, a small, black bird, wings outstretched.  A perfect copy of her own.

“It’s a rook,” he tells her.

She doesn’t answer.  Her hand reaches out, her fingers lightly brushing along the etched feathers.  She feels that spark again and it draws her closer to him.

His left hand touches her chin lightly, tilting her face up so that her gaze is pulled from the soulmark on his arm.  She didn’t realize just how close she’d moved to him until she looks into his eyes and realizes they are only inches apart.  He leans down, closing the distance, and places his lips gently on her own.

Her hand clutches his soulmark as she leans up, deepening the kiss.  He cradles her face, holding her in place, and her other arm wraps its way around his back.  She doesn’t know just quite how she got to this moment, but she never wants to leave.

When he ends the kiss, he doesn’t move, only rests his head on hers and breathes in deeply.  “Did you know that rooks mate for life?”

She holds his face in her palm, her left hand still on his mark.  A tear rolls down her cheek as she smiles, and she leans in, capturing his lips once more, knowing now how the day makes sense, knowing now how she has found the companion of her life.

-

-

Sometimes the Queen hears his voice though she hasn’t seen his face in years.  She hears him calling out to her.  She hears him whisper to her as if they are sharing a private conversation.

She woke up one night with a pain in her heart, an agony she thought would kill her.  She ran from the room and found herself alone in perfect darkness.  She clutched her heart as she sobbed, her knees on the floor, and the mark on her back aching like it had been pierced with a knife.

She is older now, more alone than she has been since she was a child.  She still hears him sometimes, at night.  She still looks to him for guidance occasionally, though he is not there beside her.  She knows he is still out there somewhere, waiting for her.

The time they had wasn’t enough, but maybe, _maybe,_ time is the only thing they need.


End file.
